


Escape

by Kahvi, Roadstergal



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: First Time, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-28
Updated: 2012-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 02:20:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadstergal/pseuds/Roadstergal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rimmer launches himself into an escape pod and leaves Red Dwarf behind, Lister insists on giving chase, if nothing else to get some answers! However, Rimmer knows that if he tells Lister the reason for his sudden flight, the consequences will be disastrous...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Rimmer was not yet used to corporeality. Between the novelty of not being able to simply walk through obstacles and the shaking from whatever passed for hologrammatic adrenaline turning sour in his system, it took far longer than it should have for him to stumble his way down to the greasy bowels of Starbug, where the escape pod lurked. He fumbled with the keys that he had lifted from the cockpit, dropping them twice, but finally managed to work the correct one into the slot and open the door. His simulated blood was pounding in his head as he stumbled into the pod and squeezed into the cramped pilot's seat, grimacing at the dust and filth that covered the interior. He awkwardly turned to close the door behind him, his back making strange popping noises as he hauled the creaking metal slab shut. He took a deep breath and pressed the big red button - or, more accurately, pressed the big, formerly red, now gritty brownish, button. The pod shook like a palsied Golden Retriever as it launched from Starbug. As the green ship receded in the distance, Rimmer finally began to calm down.

He might be safe now.

 

Bastard!

Lister paced back and forth in the sleeping quarters, unable to sit still. Occasionally, he would kick the wall, crack his knuckles, or slam his fist into his palm repeatedly. He shook, not just with anger, but with impotence; there was absolutely nothing he could do.

Smegging bastard!

Rimmer was gone. Just out of the blue he had up and left; leaving no note, no clue, no nothing. He'd just gone. For three smegging days now they'd been tracking his escape-pod; Red Dwarfs vapor-trail getting further and further away as they searched for the worlds most charismatic man. It gutted Lister to have to take this pointless detour, but it was he who had insisted they do so. They couldn't leave a man behind that was just the way it was. Not even a goit-headed gimboid like Arnold Judas Rimmer.

Lister sighed, and slumped down in the flimsy plastic folding chair, feeling it creak ominously beneath him. That did nothing to improve his mood. Nothing on this ship seemed to work right; everything was stuck together with gaffer tape and chewing gum, always just on the verge of breaking down. Supplies were low; morale was low, and getting lower by the minute. And Rimmer, being Rimmer, chose this as a good time to run.

Well, that just figured, didn't it?

Bastard.

His sulking-session was thankfully interrupted by Kryten's polite knock on the side of the open door. A moment longer, and hed have smashed something, probably hurting himself in the process. What is it, Krytes?

"We've located what we believe to be Mr. Rimmers pod, Sir. The instruments aren't clear, but Mr. Cat insists he can smell it."

"About bloody time," Lister grunted, jumping out of his seat and rubbing his hands together. "Why aren't the instruments clear?" He asked, as he followed Kryten into the cockpit.

"The weather conditions on the planet on which it has landed are appalling. We've no chance of landing any time soon. In fact, we could be here for days."

Lister groaned, and started dragging his feet. Days! As if they hadn't wasted enough time already.

Indicating the console normally manned by Rimmer, Kryten explained. "I believe we have established contact with the pod. If you'd care to contact Mr. Rimmer, you may use this interface."

Lister made a face. "Text only?"

"I'm afraid so, Sir."

Lister sighed, accepting the inevitable. "All right, then, Krytes, lets see what the smeghead's been up to." With inexperienced fingers, he clumsily began typing out a message.

 

The tattty little computer console in the pod beeped, and then glowed to sickly green life. Rimmer sighed and banged his head against the forward edge of the console a few times as letters from a transmission glowed on its screen. A transmission from Starbug.

The ponderously typed and heavily misspelled messages could only be from that art-college-educated space-bum. Lister had followed him. This would not do.

>oi! smeghed!1

  
>Smeg off, Listy.

  
>ye, right! doU've ny idEa how longit tooks to get her+

  
>About as long as it's going to take for you to get back, I would say. So get started, squire.

  
>yere a barrl o laffs, arent ya? whaon earth got into U man?

  
>Have to go, Listy. I'll miss your morning flatulence terribly, of course.

  
>go? wherere u gonna go there' noting butice n rocks fr miles1 stop messin abot n tell me what the SMEG is goingon!

  
>I can't tell you. But it's worth my hide, and probably yours, too.

  
>whatre U sayin Have u pissed somen off?Rewe bein chased by roge simulants agan?

  
>I don't consider the day complete unless I've pissed someone off, Listy.

  
>s the sanest ting ve herd u say yet

  
>But that's not the issue. All I know is that you need to get moving.

  
>i dun getthis if we'r in trouble by stayi ng here the y the HELLr u hangin around?

  
>I DON'T KNOW! I'm just doing what you... what I have to.

  
>rimmer ure not makin ny sense. Look, R u hurt? is that new litbee not workin right

  
>I'm fine, Listy, and that's all I know. And that's more than you ever needed to know.

  
>den wassa prblem? ook, just staytight, n well come get u... hm... soon. K?

  
>You can't land. You're losing Red Dwarf.

  
>cnt land now; wethers crazy. but we'l get ya outta there

  
>Lister, for smeg's sake, trust me on this one.

  
>were not leavin Uthere, n were not sMegging well sMEgging off, right? now what isit ur not tellin me?

  
>You'll be sorry, that's all I can say.

  
>whaever, rimmer I'm not in a mood f ur crazy mindgames.

  
>And I was never in the mood for yours, Listy.

  
>?

  
>Never mind.

  
>dun gimme tha! what ru on about?

  
>Toodle pips.

  
>dun toodle Pips ME, u analretentive goit! ve justspent thre days off our chartd corse chasinafter u frettin my mind off wonderin whathe SMeG wus goingN! I din knw if u wre alive R ded man!

  
>Here's a hint, Listy - I'm dead. Have been for years.

  
>u KNOW WHATI MEAN1! n now ur givin me all this cryptik nonsnesse. well Im jussnot havin it!

 

Rimmer cut the connection with a groan. That stupid smegging bastard. Couldn't be bothered to obey a direct order from a superior officer, could he? Rimmer looked with distaste at the filth on his fingers from typing on the smeggy pod computer. He switched to soft-light, let the dirt settle, and switched back to hard-light. He looked through the cloudy plexi viewscreen at the raging storm outside, and pondered.

He knew that, from an independent perspective, he was making little to no sense, and that Lister had some justification for his frustration. He was Rimmer, though, so he didn't dwell on that. Instead, he dwelled on the fact that the grotty bastard was not going to simply do as he was asked to - and very reasonably and politely asked to, at that. The smegger was going to wait out the storm and land. Rimmer simply had to accept that. But if he understood nothing else in this crazy situation, he understood that Lister must absolutely, positively _not_ find him. And that lead him to one thought that he had been doing his best to avoid thinking about. But the cramped quarters in the pod did not give him the room for evasion that he usually liked.

He could not let Starbug find him. Since Starbug would be tracking the pod's homing beacon, he'd just have to abandon the pod.

This meant a trip through the delightful weather the planet had thrown at him to welcome his arrival. Rimmer squinted anxiously through the viewscreen. Rain and sleet fell in sheets, beating a dull tom-tom beat on the metal hull of the pod. Sheet lightning flashed almost nonstop in the sulky, low-lying clouds. Bolts licked down from the clouds to touch the ground, the claps of thunder almost immediate. No, fried hologram was not on his menu; he could not stay out on the surface.

However, on the plummeting descent to the planet's surface, he had not been sufficiently distracted by shrieking like a newly-minted eunuch not to notice a rather large formation of rocks off to what was currently his left. He should strike out for that. It might offer some shelter.

It had smegging better well offer shelter, he thought as he cracked the pod's door and was lashed in the face by freezing rain. He considered switching to soft-light, but that would just leave his light-bee more exposed. He mentally prepared himself for the run, took a deep breath, and sat back in the seat and closed the pod door behind him. There _had_ to be another option.

An hour's worth of unproductive brainstorming later, he once again pulled open the pod door. This time he scrunched his face, took a deep breath, and sprinted like a horny gorilla was on his heels. The rain and sleet lashed at his eyes, making it difficult to see, and he stumbled over the rocky and uneven terrain. The air crackled with electricity, and local buildups played havoc with his hologram. Light snapped painfully at his borders from energy discharge, and a hard snap switched him temporarily from hard light to soft and back again. But up ahead, he could see the large pile of rocks he had seen from the air, blurry from the freezing rain sticking to his lashes. He ran even faster as lightning struck the ground with a deafening crack not very far at all to his right. He took it as a sign that his simulated body did not have a heart, as it failed to leap out of his throat and take off on its own. He stumbled gratefully into the shelter of a large overhang, falling to the ground. He lay there for a few minutes, catching his hologrammatic breath, as simulated sweat trickled icily down his back.

The overhang was large enough to shelter him from the worst of the storm, and once his panic had subsided to a background level, he started to feel along the formation, searching for a deeper fissure or cave in which to better ride out the storm - and the stupid smegging rescue attempt.

Two thoughts occurred to him in rapid succession. The first had to do with the location of the pod's laser pistol, which was back at the pod. The second had to do with the probability of him braving the storm again to go back and get it, which was zero. He swore silently, and continued his search, walking clockwise pressed against the rock under the overhang.

 

Lister banged his fist on the console in frustration, and yelled something incoherent. Kryten, who had wandered off to do the dishes, came running back in, a look of horror on his face.

"Sir! What's the matter? Is Mr. Rimmer hurt?"

"Not yet." Lister pulled his gloves on tighter, and started off towards the cargo bay.

"Sir?" Kryten shuffled after him, radiating confusion. "Sir, where are you going?"

"I'm going down there." Lister strode resolutely towards a particular stack of crates, and looked around for the crowbar he knew was nearby.

"Down there?" Kryten looked perplexed. But then, as realization struck, he ran towards Lister, gripping the human's arms in a tight lock.

"Kryten, let go, man!"

"I'm sorry, Sir, but what you are planning is not only pointless, it is suicidal and stupid. I cannot allow a human being to come to harm!"

Lister, struggling in the mechanoid's grip, tried to move closer to the crowbar. "I know what I'm doing, Krytes!"

"I'm sorry, I cannot allow it!"

As they moved backwards and forwards in a parody of a mambo, the Cat sauntered in, wearing his brand new mauve suede-leather ensemble with matching boots and fedora. "Heeey! What are you guys doing? Playing find the forked stick?" He picked up the crowbar, and held it up over his head, triumphantly. "I win!"

Realizing the absurdity of the situation, Lister stopped struggling, and sagged to the floor. "We gotta get him out of there, he sighed, dejectedly. Something is very wrong, I can feel it."

The Cat gave him an odd look. "Wrong? What could be better than life without Captain Charisma?" His grin stiffened when he noticed where they were standing, and his eyes flicked from the crowbar to Lister to the crate, and back again. "Hang on," he said, "was he trying to do what I think he was trying to do?"

"Indeed, Sir," Kryten said, in somber tones.

"Are you crazy?" The Cat hissed at Lister, and moved slightly away from the human. "You wanna get killed?"

"Why is everyone freaking out about this? Its just a flight-suit. People use them all the time."

"Stupid, dead people use them, Sir." Kryten moved towards the crate protectively. "And they were diving under normal conditions. The storms on that planet are class turquoise on the Helgeland scale. You'd never make it."

Lister made a face, not wanting to admit the mechanoid was right. "What do you suggest we do then?"

"I suggest, Sir, that we try calling Mr. Rimmer again."

"I already tried that; he's not responding." Lister took his hat off, and started turning it round and round in his hands.

"Oh," the mechanoid replied smugly, "I didn't mean on the console."

 

Rimmer sat in a depression in the rock, feeling a depression of his own. Part of him said that he should find a better shelter than this, but the rest of him beat that part of him very soundly and told it to smeg off. The electrical storm had not been good to his lightbee; the edges of himself still flickered and crackled, and he sat with his head between his legs, feeling the same vague nausea that Lister's orange moonboots used to elicit. He would just have to count on the weather to keep him hidden.  
He decided the situation could not possibly be worse. He was quickly proven wrong as Lister's voice sounded in his head.

"Is this thing on?"  
"Hello?"  
"Rimmer?"

Rimmer leapt to his feet with an unmanly squeak, banging his head against a chunk of rock. He swore, grabbed his head, and looked around wildly for the source of the voice. "What the smegging fuck?" he gasped.

"This is amazin' - I can hear ya!"

Rimmer, unable to find any source for the voice, looked heavenwards. "Not only have I suddenly gone schizoid, but my subconscious sounds like Lister. I'm in hell."

"I'm not yer subconscious, you gimboid; it's me!"

Rimmer could not help looking around. "I feel so much better. What the fuck is going on?"

"We hacked into yer light-bee. Kryten says there's an override module if the computer is down and can't communicate with ya."

Rimmer sighed and crossed his arms. His hologram crackled ominously. "I just can't get away from you, can I?"

Lister laughed. "Too right, man."

Rimmer groaned and sat back down on the rough ground.

"Now where the smeg are ya?"

"Listy, just _go_ ," Rimmer grated.

"No."

Rimmer pinched the bridge of his nose between two long fingers. "Why the smeg won't you just go?" he asked, surprised at how exhausted his voice sounded.

"That's not what I do, Rimmer. You know that. I won't leave you behind."

"I have no idea why not," Rimmer grumbled.

Lister snorted. "You really hate yerself, don't ya? You might be a smeghead, Rimmer, but yer one of the team. And I won't abandon you. Simple as that."

Rimmer sighed and leaned his head back against the wall. "You're going to keep piping your damned chipper smegging voice into my head until I tell you why I left, won't you."

"Hang on a bit..." Lister's voice sounded quieter, almost uncertain. Rimmer heard what sounded like muffled voices buzzing in his head. That tears it, he decided. If Lister pipes through hold music, I'm going to go insane.  
"Right, I asked the Cat and Kryters to leave. It's just you and me now. What's wrong, Rimmer?"

Rimmer decided just to tell the smegger. Let him figure it out. "You told me to leave."

"What?"

"Remember when we were going lightspeed on Red Dwarf, and saw future echoes?"

"Yeah? Wait..."

"Well, we came close to a singularity the night I left. Something small and very, very dense. Neutron star, black hole, one of your scones. Something like that." Lister snorted. "We just barely brushed the gravity well, but it must have altered time enough for me to see a future echo. I saw... you."

"What did I say?"

"You looked winded. You said, 'I know you can't see me, but I know you saw me at this point back in the past, so I'm saying this in the present for you to hear in the past.' Rimmer paused; that sounded a little off. Well, something like that. Then you said it was worth your hide and mine to bugger off of the ship to the escape pod. I thought it was a stupid prank of yours. Then I saw me..." Rimmer stammered to a halt and closed his eyes.

"You saw yerself?"

"I was on the ground; my shirt was ripped; I looked desperate. I said, 'Trust him, Rimsy.' And then I told me not to tell you that you told me to do what you told me to do... er..."

Lister sounded as confused as Rimmer felt. That served him right, Rimmer thought. "So hang on, hang on... The future me told you, that you'd told him... No... Wait... " Lister's sigh hissed in Rimmer's brain.

Rimmer twisted his mouth. "Erm, shall I take it from the top?" he asked, trying to line it all up.

"No, wait... There's something not right about that, yeah?"

Lord save us from Captain Obvious. "Really?" Rimmer asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"How would the future me know you'd see me, unless he knew we'd have this conversation? Which means we were supposed to have this conversation, yeah?"

Rimmer raised his head and looked around the cave, making sure nobody was there to see the utterly abashed look that swept over his face. "Oh. I... hadn't thought of that."

"Um... What does this mean?"

Rimmer sighed. "I lost track of this about three incarnations ago." Something else was beginning to bother him. Greatly. "How the smegging hell did you get _me_ in on this?"

"Look, man, seems to me whatever's going to happen is going happen anyway. That's what it was like with those first echoes we saw too, yeah? We can't change anything, so why worry about it? As soon as the storm clears, we're coming down to get ya."

Rimmer was unconvinced. "But how do I know that now is the time to come back? Maybe I'm supposed to come back at some time other than the time you're trying to make me to..." He stopped, tried to restart, and stopped again. "Oh, to hell with it."

"Stop trying to make sense of it, Rimmer, it'll just give ye a headache. God knows it's given me one."

Rimmer covered his eyes with his palm and put his head back against the rock wall. "What in hell is going on, Listy?"

"Beats me, man," Lister answered, helpfully. "Where are you, anyway? The pod was signaling that it had been vacated."

"In a rather nice little cave somewhere nearby." Rimmer lowered his hand and looked around the tight rock confines. "Sparsely furnished, but the neighbors are quiet." Lister laughed, then stopped.

"So wait - you went out in that storm? What about yer light bee? Are you all right?" Lister's voice sounded concerned. Rimmer grated his teeth at the thought of the absurdly sympathetic look that would be crossing his face. He looked down at his unstable projection. "Not doing so well... And that was before I started hearing your voice in my head."

Lister's voice sounded uncertain, now, as well as concerned. "Eh? Are you hurt? Or... I dunno... Malfunctioning? Or something..." his voice trailed off, embarrassed.

"Listy..." Rimmer grumbled, irately, "just come pick me up." He twisted his face in annoyance. "Unless you come back and tell yourself not to."

"We're coming, but it'll be a few days... Are you going to manage?

"Well, from the looks of things, I suppose I end up managing, don't I?"

"Oh, right. Right. This is all too weird for me."

"There's one very big favor you can do for me, Listy," Rimmer said, with sincerity. He paused, and snapped, "Get your smegging voice out of my head!"

Lister snorted again, giving Rimmer a magnificent mental picture of his nostrils and the contents therein, and laughed. "Ye say that now... Just wait 'til you've spent a few days in solitude. But whatever you want, man. "

"I can reflect on my past sins, and repent. Joining JMC, for starters."

There was an odd note in Lister's voice as he replied, "Yeah... We all have our regrets, eh?"

"What are you going on about?" Rimmer asked.

"Kryten said you could contact us by giving a mental command or something. You'll probably figure it out. You'll have time for it, anyway."

"Just keep yourself from crashing on the way down, miladdo." Rimmer snapped out the parting shot, but then rested his head on his knees, exhausted, and let himself drift. The last thing he heard was Lister's quiet voice saying, "See ya later, smeghead..."


	2. Chapter 2

Lister whistled, slightly out of tune, as he dressed himself in the darkness of the sleeping quarters. He could only find one sock, but at least his favorite trousers were clean; the ones with just the one tear down the back of his right thigh, and two of the buttons missing from the fly. They weren’t his actual favorite trousers, of course; those had been left back on Red Dwarf. These were his second favorites, which he’d thankfully left here after a fishing trip - one of the ones Rimmer hadn’t found out about. Gingerly, he walked over to the hamper in the corner, and fished out one of the shirts lying on top, sniffing it experimentally. He nodded, sagely. Virtually clean, it was; even Rimmer would have worn this, if forced. The thought of Rimmer made him frown, and he started moving faster. The shirt was thrown on unceremoniously, no t-shirt underneath. He hastily buttoned it, getting it totally wrong, but hardly noticing, and caring even less. His boots were dragged out from underneath the bunk, and put on. He looked around, almost jumping with impatience. What was missing? What? Ah… With a wide grin, he half-ran towards his bunk, and dug around near the foot-end, eventually finding a small, blue bottle with a fancy-looking cork. Still grinning, he unscrewed the cork, and poured about half the contents of the tiny flask on his hands, then slathered as much of it as he could on his cheeks. He stood up, straightening his posture. Perfection.

As he tip-toed his way into the cargo-bay, Lister found himself feeling oddly at ease. At least if he died, he’d make a smegging good looking corpse. He sniggered nervously at his own joke, cradling the crowbar in his hands. Time to break out the flight suit.

The X-3M Mark VI flight-suit was an experimental model; the first made for orbital, rather than sub-orbital, drops. None of the test-pilots had survived, but luckily Lister was blissfully unaware of this as he stumbled into the open, superman-sized shell. Once inside, the two halves melted together seamlessly, and simultaneously gave him control of its movement functions. With some care, he walked clumsily towards the air-lock. Five days, he told himself; it’s been five days. The storm isn’t abating. He refuses to talk to me, what the smeg am I supposed to do; nothing? The door closed behind him with a hiss, and he swallowed, trying not to think.

Well. This was it.

He hit the large, blinking red button.

 

Rimmer sat in a daze. His hologram continued to flicker at random intervals, jerking him painfully when it did. The howl of the storm and the crashes of thunder had settled into the background. When he heard a wailing noise, his first thought was that it was in his mind. His second thought, which brought him abruptly to awareness, was that he might be making it. He put his hand over his mouth, and the sound only got louder. It sounded like it was coming from outside of the cave. He crawled closer to the entrance to his cave, and the sound grew yet louder, almost to a deafening screech.  
A red streak shot from the sky, landing on the ground disturbingly close to the cave with an explosion of heat and fragmented rock. Rimmer flinched back and flung a forearm over his face. When nothing else happened for some seconds afterwards, he peeked nervously out from below his arm.

The smoking rim of a newly-formed crater was just visible. A large, bulbous metal cocoon, vaguely bipedal, sat in the middle, still glowing red-hot. As he watched, it split in two, and a figure emerged.

Aliens!

The thought was not as exciting as it had been back on Red Dwarf. Back before he had a body that they might otherwise have given him - not to mention a hide to keep safe from them.

Rimmer moved out a little farther and squinted out into the lashing rain. The figure sat up and staggered out of the eerie smoke that wafted around the crater.

It was Lister. Bootless, with one sock on.

Rimmer smacked his forehead very hard with his palm. This looked like another brainstorm from the Space Corps’s master of smegup. "Capital rescue plan," he shouted.

In return, only incoherent mumblings drifted to him through the noise of the storm.

"Lister!" Rimmer looked uneasily up at the sky, where lightning still flickered. This was _not_ a good place for Lister to linger.

Lister was stumbling along the ground, limping slightly. His name, he thought vaguely. Someone was calling his name. What was his name again?

Rimmer cringed at the storm, stuck his head, very gingerly, farther out of the fissure, and yelled, more loudly, "Lister!" Smeg, he hoped he would not have to run back out in that.

Lister! That was it; that was his name! Waking from his daze, he looked around, horrified, realizing where he was. Hobbling as fast as he could, he rushed towards the fissure, its entrance marked by a hologram that sputtered blue light. Rimmer grabbed Lister’s arm and hauled the other man to the back of the small fissure. He stumbled over the rocky ground and fell, Lister landing squarely on top of him.  
Rimmer groaned. He had been expecting Starbug and derision from three sides; although he would happily skip the latter, he had rather been looking forward to the former. "Is this what we laughingly refer to as a 'rescue'?"

Lister looked around, caught somewhat off-guard. He didn’t feel quite himself. Confused and sore from the crash, it took him quite a few seconds to notice that he was practically sitting on Rimmer's lap. "Erm..." he managed, finally. "Hiya?"

Rimmer, in turn, noted that he was more or less cuddling Lister, and tried to scurry backwards. In the confines of the mini-cave, it was not a very effective movement. He ended up pinned in the wedge-shaped rear of the cave.

Lister tried to get to his feet, but failed, settling for a least-resistance fall backwards into a seated position. Well, that figured. What had he been expecting; that Rimmer would welcome him with open arms and a snog? He’d stopped dissecting his feelings for the hologram long ago, because there was no point, was there? Even if Lister wanted, even needed, something more than half-arsed friendship, this was _Rimmer_ ; all neuroses and non-existent self-esteem, too uptight for anything other than scorn and loathing. And it was not like it would even be physically possible to have sex, because Rimmer already had a stick stuck so far up his…

"Lister, what the smeg was that?" Rimmer said suddenly, interrupting Lister’s gloomy train of thought. "And why do you smell like a fire ripped through the perfume counter at Superdrug?"

Lister stroked his cheeks. "Thought I might as well go out looking and smelling like a man, ye know. If I'd've died and that, I mean." He tried to get up, but his legs informed him that a little procrastination was in order. And Lister was not a man to argue with procrastination. "Which I didn't. "

"You didn't die, or you didn't go out smelling like a man?" asked Rimmer.

Lister considered this. Thinking was slow and difficult, like trying to swim through custard. "I forget."

"Smashing plan, though, Listy, and I mean that in the most literal sense."

"Well what was I supposed to do, eh? That smegging storm never ends, man! Cat kept pestering me to leave you be and just bolt. I was getting sick of it." Lister played with his hair, plucking the burnt bits off of his braids. They smelled about as bad as he felt.

"So now you're going to let Cat pester Kryten to leave us both." Rimmer groused.

Lister shrugged. "Nah. He likes me." Rimmer’s nostrils flared. "Plus, Kryten wouldn't stand for it."

Rimmer muttered something about useless mechanoids with strange tastes.

Lister’s brow furrowed as he plucked at his hair. "I swear, he's got some kind of odd fixation on me." Kryten could be such a pain. He meant well, but he meant too well; that was the trouble.

Rimmer was taken aback. "Yes, well…" he struggled lamely for his usual rudeness, wondering where it had got to, "lucky for you he only has a trademark where the naughties should be."

Rimmer’s implication registered in Lister’s brain, and he froze, eyebrows shooting up. Smegging hell! "Hey, hey - not like that! I didn't mean it like that!" He screwed up his face, as his mind filled with imagery he hoped to God he would be able to scrub out of there later. "Urg... That's disgusting, that is." Why did Rimmer always jump to the worst possible conclusions?

Rimmer licked his lips and looked down, nervously, casting about for _anything_ else to talk about. He hugged himself and slid down the wall to a squat as his hologram started to flicker again, demanding his attention.

Well, thought Lister, wasn’t this nice? He hadn’t been this uncomfortable alone with Rimmer since… Well, since he couldn’t remember when. "Lovely weather we're having," he ventured, at a loss for anything else to say that wouldn’t set Rimmer off into something or other.

Rimmer frowned, looking at the rain-lashed rock outside. "Yes, but always keep in mind that April showers bring May lightning strikes."

Lister looked at Rimmer’s flickering body. Much as he wanted to be annoyed with the hologram, he was more worried than anything else. He gestured towards the blue sparks, who would’ve looked pretty had they not been a sign of something being horribly wrong. "How long've you been doing that for?"

Rimmer shrugged. "Ever since I left the pod."

Standing up was as painful as he’d expected, but Lister finally managed to get himself into an upright position. Moving closer to where Rimmer huddled in the back of the fissure, he started chewing on his lower lip. He had no idea how holography worked, not to mention hard-light holography, but Rimmer did not look good. Rimmer looked up at him, alarmed. "Listy, what are you doing?"

"Ease up, I'm just having a look at ya," Lister said, in what he hoped was a calming and suitably neutral tone of voice. Reaching out carefully, he touched the flickering edges of Rimmer’s hard-light shoulder. Prickly blue sparks just barely had the chance to graze his fingers before Rimmer flinched back, making Lister recoil.

"Does it hurt?" he asked, unnecessarily.

"Yes, it smegging hurts!" Rimmer barked.

"All right!" Lister said, anger, fear and frustration welling up inside him like foam on an over-filled pint of lager. "I'm sorry!" He wanted to do something - anything - to help, but he couldn’t. He folded his hands behind his head, and tried to think clearly.

Rimmer looked down at his unstable body. He could see, out of the corner of his eye, that Lister was still looking at him, biting his lip. Rimmer sighed. "It hurts whether you touch it or not."

Did that mean Rimmer wanted to be touched? Lister gave him a sideways look, trying to figure out what exactly was going on.

"Just when it flickers. I don't know why it's doing that. I think my lightbee got zapped in the storm."

"Does it help if yer soft-light?" It was probably a stupid thing to ask, but when it came to this subject matter, stupid was all Lister had to work with.

"I can't switch anymore, either," Rimmer muttered. In the days in the cave, he had tried everything he could think of - which admittedly wasn’t much.

"Oh." There had to be something, hadn’t there? He started to walk around the hologram, not really certain what he was looking for; if he was looking for anything at all. Perhaps some reassurance that whatever was ailing Rimmer could be fixed somehow; wasn’t a sentence of final death.

Rimmer sucked in his lower lip and hugged himself closer, his discomfort doubled by having an observer. "Blast."

Lister felt like he should be doing something supportive, but he was as much in need of comfort as the other man. And although Lister was a physical person, who liked to hug and slap and touch, Rimmer definitely wasn’t. A hug was out of the question, then, as was a reassuring stroke on the arm. Trying to be as non-committal as possible, Lister put his hand on Rimmer’s shoulder awkwardly.

At least Rimmer did not flinch this time.

Lister looked away. He removed his hand. He looked at the roof. He whistled. He was rapidly running out of things to do to stop himself from tearing up.

"Listy..." Rimmer said, tentatively. He had only one suggestion, and he did not like it.

Lister whistled more nervously. A cold draft whistled through the small cave, and he hugged himself, suddenly very aware of the chill.

"I haven't tried..." Rimmer continued, haltingly.

"What?" Lister asked, jumping to attention.

"Because I can't do it myself..."

"What haven't you tried?" Lister gestured vaguely but eagerly.

"Erm... reboot," Rimmer muttered at his boots.

"Eh?"

"My lightbee. Switch it off and on again."

Lister felt almost disappointed. Was it that simple? "Oh, all right. How'd'you do that then?"

"Well, I have to turn it off, because you can't get to it, and then you have to turn it back on." Rimmer swallowed. "Listy..."

"Yeah?" Rimmer was looking at Lister with a pained expression. "What?" There was something very disturbing in those murky-green eyes.

"If I turn it off... do you promise you'll turn it back on again?"

Lister looked like Rimmer had just asked him for a singing kumquat. "Eh? Of course I will! Why wouldn't I?"

"You might hold it until you find another personality disk. Like you tried to do with Kochanski on Red Dwarf."

Do you promise to turn it back on again. The words echoed in Lister’s mind, seeming devoid of any rational meaning. Rimmer was actually afraid he wouldn’t turn him back to life. Didn’t think all these years together meant he had value as anything other than a potential vessel to house someone Lister really wanted; someone he could actually care about. Arnold J. Rimmer honestly believed Lister would do what amounted to killing him in his sleep, just so he could use his discarded shell. Lister felt sick.

Rimmer sighed. But Lister was merely looking at him, quietly and intently. After some time, the younger man walked towards him, and kneeled down, looking straight into Rimmer’s eyes. He was close enough to see the myriad colors that made up the irises, and smiled softly. Yeah, Rimmer was a mess, but it wasn’t just his upbringing. He, David Lister, was just as much a part of it. He couldn’t take back the jibes and insults, but he could at least fix this. It was the easiest thing in the world, really. As the hologram continued to worry at his lip, Lister leaned forward and gently planted a kiss on Rimmer's lips. And with a brilliant grin, he said: "Turn yerself off, Arn."

Rimmer felt rather like the way he had when the lightning bolt had crashed right next to him. His mouth fell open rather stupidly. He sat that way for a moment, trying to process this - and failing, utterly. He tried to cast it as a prank or a joke, but it was not Lister’s way to prank without an audience to enjoy it. Damn it all, he knew Lister was the master of false sincerity, and every Rimmer directive told him with absolute clarity that he should not trust the kindness that was radiating from Lister’s smiling face…

He finally closed his mouth with a snap. He pushed one hand to his chest, and his hologram snapped painfully with blue light at the intersection of hand and uniform. He yelped, then bit his lip and pushed his hand through more firmly. He faded to nothing, and the bee dropped to the ground.

Lister looked at the bee lying on the ground, still smiling. Picking it up gingerly, he turned it slowly around in his hands, looking for the button that would bring it back to life. A look of awe crossed his face as he considered the fact that Rimmer… _was_ that little chunk of metal. There was the switch, looking just like a button. That felt somehow wrong, considering the miracle that occurred when Lister pressed it.  
Rimmer sprang back into being as red-clad soft-light, Lister's hand sticking through his chest. Rimmer looked down at it, a little awkwardly.

"Er... Sorry!" Lister said, pulling his hand back and shaking it, as if it were wet. You shouldn’t be able to poke your hands through people, he thought.

Rimmer straightened his already perfectly straight uniform. The smegger didn’t understand how _invasive_ it felt… but he had turned the hologram back on. He had kept his word. Rimmer tried to look at Lister, but could not; he dropped his eyes, and cleared his throat. Lister, however, met Rimmer's quick glance calmly, and grinned a shy and mischievous grin. "Nothing to it!"

Rimmer felt very disconcerted by... well, by everything. "Er, yes..." And he still could not meet Lister's eyes. "Now..." There should be a good sentence to go after "Now," he thought, desperately. Something manly and intelligent and leaderly. Too bad he just cannot seem to bring it to mind.

"Feeling better?" Lister asked. _He_ certainly did! The feeling of Rimmer’s lips on his own still lingered, and he had the absurd urge to keep licking them.

Rimmer switched back to hard-light and prodded himself. "I think so."

"No more sparks?" Lister gingerly touched the edge of Rimmer's uniform.

Rimmer put two hands on his stomach and pushed, firmly. "I don't think so." He breathed a very genuine sigh of relief.

Lister gave a whoop of triumph. "Yeees! There you are then!" He flashed a huge grin and laughed, feeling all kinds of good. In fact, looking at Rimmer’s lean, athletic form, the kiss still fresh in his mind, he felt rather horny.

Rimmer grinned weakly in return, and then started to chew at his lower lip again, eyes flicking around the confines. "Now... we wait... I suppose." He continued to chew.

Lister nodded, filing his sudden arousal away for later. "Can you contact Starbug?

Rimmer concentrated, his face scrunching up into a fascinating array of amusing expressions. What do you know, Lister thought to himself with a chuckle, I see him looking like that, and I still wanna shag him! Smeg it all, I’m a randy git, aren’t I?

Static crackled in Rimmer’s mind as he hunted for the connection to the ship. "It's like shortwave from the Russian front," he grumbled. "Kryten!"

Kryten’s voice sounded in his head. "Yes, Mister Rimmer?"

"Took you long enough. What are you doing, you overgrown vacuum cleaner?" Lister, only able to hear Rimmer’s half of the conversation, smirked.

"Looking for Mister Lister! He took the experimental flightsuit..."

"Experimental flightsuit? Was it worth a lot?" Rimmer asked. Lister started to make frantic ‘don’t tell him’ motions, jumping up and down and wincing whenever his bare foot touched the rocky floor.

"I’m sorry, sir?"

"You're going to have to take it out of his salary," Rimmer said, smirking. Oh, he lived for this. So to speak. Lister gave him the finger.

Kryten, meanwhile, was having conniptions. "Mister Lister! Oh, tell me he isn't… he isn't..."

"Isn’t what? Isn't clean? Isn't well-dressed? Isn't articulate?"

"What's he saying??" Lister asked, filled with suspicion and impatience.

"Isn't d.... d... d..." Kryten could not get the word out.

"Drunk? To his great sadness, I'm sure, he's not."

Lister’s smile flickered out. "Don’t mess around, man!"

"...dead?" Kryten finally managed to spit it out.

"No, Kryten, he's not dead," Rimmer replied.

Lister glared at him. "You smegging git!" Rimmer really was a smeghead. That did weaken his libido. Somewhat.

Kryten, however, was too relieved to mind. "Oh, thank goodness Mister Lister’s all right!"

Rimmer twisted his upper lip at Lister. _He fancies you_ , Rimmer mouthed. Lister slapped the back of Rimmer’s head.

"Lister is as fine as he ever gets," Rimmer confirmed.

The sound of tapping keys came into Rimmer’s head. "However, we can't come down to rescue him until the storms abate," Kryten continued.

" _Him_?" Rimmer asked, insulted. Lister rolled his eyes. Here they went again.

"Both of you," Kryten clarified, grudgingly. "However," he continued, "the storm front does appear to be rolling off. It shouldn't take much more than a day for it to be clear enough for us to land."

Rimmer’s jaw dropped. "A day? Are we talking a complete 24-hour period of time?" Five days stuck in a cave took the cake, but one day stuck in a cave with Lister was likely to take the entire pastry shop.

"A day??" Lister echoed, looking around the tiny fissure they were currently calling home. "Aw, smeg!"

Kryten continued in his annoyingly soothing voice. "Yes, sir. Sorry, but we just can't land safely before then." Rimmer nodded at Lister, who sat with his back against the rough wall and sulked.

"With Cat at the helm, you can't land safely after then, either," Rimmer grumbled. "Well, keep us informed."

Rimmer looked at Lister and sighed. "24 smegging hours, man," Lister groused. "24!"

"I know, I know!" Rimmer sat down, too, with an aggravated sigh. "What were you thinking?" He paused and rephrased the question. "I mean, what are you going to be were thinking?" The tense changes alone were enough to make his head spin.

"Eh?" Lister said, before suddenly realizing. His head began to throb slightly, wary of impending pain. "Are we back to that now?"

"Well, it is… will be… the reason we're trapped in a very small cave for 24 hours!" Rimmer yelled.

"Rimmer, for smeg’s sake - stop worrying about which goited non-existent tense ya need to conjugate whatever, and focus on what’s important!"

"Conjugate it however you smegging well please! Is this just something where you had to say it in order to make the time loop happen - because it had already happened?" Rimmer considered for a minute. "And why were you winded? And what was I doing with my shirt ripped? Something bad must have happened!"

Lister shrugged "Maybe I'd been running."

"That would be a first."

"And... I dunno, maybe you'd been... " Lister tried to think of an innocuous possibility. He failed.

"Darning?"

"Look, does it matter?" Lister asked, irritated. "We'll find out soon enough anyway."

Rimmer sat back down, sulkily. Lister turned his head to look at the storm raging outside. His mind was oddly blank.

"Fancy a shower?" Rimmer asked. Lister shook his head and snorted, a faint image of the two of them naked under cascades of water prodding his subconscious insistently.

"You couldn't pay me to go out in that again," Rimmer muttered. Lister nodded, and then shivered again. It really was very cold, and he was hardly dressed for the climate. Rimmer tried to be a good smeghead and ignore Lister’s obvious discomfort. He looked around, and sighed.

"Cold?"

Lister gave him an incredulous look. "Ya think??"

Rimmer mimicked Lister’s voice. "'Does it hurt?'"

Lister had to smile a little. "Heh. Touché, man."

Rimmer looked around again. "Nothing to burn," he said, his mouth a thin, hard line.

A look of sudden pain and regret sprang to Lister’s face. Burn. The memory of that sodding planetoid hit him like a sledgehammer to the groin. He could swear there was a distinctive, faint smell of burning wood in the air, but knew it was just his mind playing tricks. He turned his head away from Rimmer. Yeah. We all have regrets. An uncomfortable silence lay over them both as Rimmer fumed, silently.  
Lister suddenly straightened and looked Rimmer in the eyes. "We all have regrets, man."

"Do we." Rimmer’s voice was as cold as the storm outside. Lister plunged ahead nevertheless. If he did not say this now, he might never, after all.

"Yeah. Well, I do."

Rimmer picked at his fingers. He tried to hang onto his anger, but his thin hard line began to waffle into a sad frown.

"It's just..." Lister continued, "sometimes I act like a git, because I don't know what else to do. You know?"

Rimmer continued to pick at his fingers. "I wanted to smash that guitar, once I got my hard-light body."

"I know." Lister’s eyes danced. "But you didn't."

"No point," Rimmer mumbled to his boots. Smegging hell, this was not how he wanted to spend 24 hours.

"Oh?"

"You only play it in space now, anyway," Rimmer said, lamely.

"Right." A sudden look of determination crossed Lister’s face. "Well, for whatever it's worth now, guy, after all this time... I'm sorry." He put his hand on Rimmer’s thigh.

Rimmer looked down at Lister’s gloved hand, seeing red instead of blue. "This is oddly familiar." His voice was back in the Antarctic zone.

Lister pulled his hand away, and covered his face with it. This really wasn’t going well. This was going absolutely the opposite of well. He brought up the other hand, burying his face in them. "God, I'm such an idiot!" How could he have managed to bring up the two least proud moments in his life within the span of minutes? He thought he was supposed to be good with people; that’s what Kryten always said, anyway. Oh, bollocks, what could an android possibly know about human inter-relations anyway? He caught a stray hair, and started chewing it in frustration.

Rimmer started to agree, and then stopped. He pulled his legs up to his chest.

"I'm just messing this up, aren't I?" Lister groaned.

"What, precisely, is 'this'?" Rimmer asked.

Lister ignored him, in a world entirely of his own now. "That's what I always do. I try to do right, but I just mess it up."

Rimmer felt his frustration turning to embarrassment. He did not want to have this conversation. Smeg, he would run back to the pod at this rate.

"I can never do right by you, can I?" Lister sighed. He looked towards Rimmer, trying to catch the hologram’s attention. The hologram’s attention was firmly on his boots. "I'm sorry," he said, trying his best to put years of regret into two tiny words.

"For what?" Rimmer asked. He ground his teeth. Couldn’t Lister dump his grotty little soul somewhere else?

Lister shrugged. "Everythin'." Everything he’d done and hadn’t done. Everything he’d said and not said. Who was to say which had hurt the most?

"Yes..." Rimmer sighed. "So am I." He was sorry about every smegging thing that had happened since he died, but that certainly included all of the sniping and mean-spirited pranks that had been tossed back and forth between him and Lister. Like the frog and the scorpion, though, it was just his nature.

"Well, that's something, innit?"

Rimmer nodded, still holding his legs and staring fiercely at his boots.

Lister exhaled deeply, feeling as though a huge iron weight had been lifted from his chest. Things looked so much brighter now. The stirrings in his groin did the physiological equivalent of coughing politely, and he found himself giving Rimmer a hungry look. "I'm still cold, though, ya know." Rimmer looked up, confused at the handbrake U-turn in the conversation. Lister giggled. "Hey, maybe that's why I was runnin' - to keep warm!"

This caught Rimmer completely by surprise, and he forgot to squelch his grin for a second. "And how was my shirt supposed to help?"

Lister looked at Rimmer's shirt, perhaps a little too long. "Yeah, there's that."

Rimmer reached out and tentatively touched Lister's hand. It was a brown chunk of icy flesh. His eyes widened "You _are_ cold."

"That's what I keep saying!" Lister said. He grabbed Rimmer’s hand, eagerly; it was warm, like the heat vented by a CPU. Lister grabbed the other hand, too, putting his own cold hands inside of them. "Aaahh..." he sighed, all sorts of pleasant imagery awakening in his mind, "nice!"

Rimmer looked slightly shocked, but did not pull his hands back. He was not used to being touched, and did not know what he _should_ be doing in response. What he wanted to do always took backseat to that. His nostrils twitched.

Lister looked up from rubbing his hands between Rimmer’s when he noted how still the other man’s were. "You OK?"

Rimmer said nothing. He stared at Lister’s icy hands, and started, very cautiously, to rub them in his. This, at least, was unequivocally an Appropriate Thing to do. If he had looked up at that moment, he would have seen an evil glint sneaking into Lister’s eye. "Mmm..." Lister sighed, "Feels good, that... "

Rimmer smiled nervously, and kept rubbing gingerly.

"Are you not cold then?" Lister asked innocently.

"Well," Rimmer said, thinking this over, "I know it's cold, but my hard-light body doesn't really get... cold." Like some bloody vehicle, his hard-light drive generated its own warmth. The evil look in Lister’s eyes sailed to depths that Beelzebub himself would have had to applaud, had he been present. Rimmer, his eyes focused on Lister’s hands, again missed it entirely.

Well now. Here was a turn up for the books. "Really…" Lister grinned.

Rimmer looked up, confused. "Well... yes..."

Lister pulled one hand from between Rimmer’s, and stuck it up Rimmer’s sleeve, feeling the hard-light arm. Muscles moved slightly to accommodate him, and he felt blood rushing to all sorts of interesting parts of his own anatomy. Rimmer flinched and froze, his eyebrows shooting upwards. "Hey! That's amazin'!" Lister exclaimed.

"Erm..." Rimmer’s lips twitched. "…yes..." He mentally searched the Space Corps directives. For all of their specificity in the proper treatment of various parts of the women’s gym, they had nothing to say about acceptable degrees of physical contact between second and third technicians. Or what to do when a subordinate called your arm ‘amazin’.’

Lister stuck his other hand up Rimmer’s other sleeve. "Rather cozy, this." He grinned at the hologram.

Rimmer’s density rivaled that of the cores of most major planets, but even he was starting to get the feeling that something more was afoot. He reacted with the last weapon that was rattling at the bottom of his arsenal - patently false bravado. "Erm - warmer there, Lister?"

Lister couldn’t help but stifle a laugh. "Yup!" He snuggled his arms as far up inside Rimmer's jacket arms as they would fit. Rimmer smiled lamely and cleared his throat. "Oh, capital, that. Glad to be of help, and all." Lister was now so close that he was almost touching Rimmer's body with his own. It was all he could do not to wrap himself around that delicious hard-light body and shag it absolutely senseless right now. Rimmer was breathing a little quickly. He licked his lips.

Knowing it had to be said, and that the time for doing so would have to be now, Lister forced himself to calm down, and asked "Do you mind this? Like... At all? 'Cause now's the time to let me know, if you know what I mean..."

Rimmer paused to consider this statement, and all of the implications. The rational part of his mind deferred to the visceral part, saying it would be in the sauna later if it was needed. The visceral part of his mind assured him that this felt oddly thrilling, and rather good, overall. But Rimmer was not a man who was capable of taking initiative in a matter like this, even to just say yes. His hands, which had been dangling somewhat stupidly at Lister's sides ever since Lister had stuck his hands up Rimmer's sleeves, twitched.

Lister waited, putting on a mock-suffering look. After about a minute of this, he said, "Blink once for yes, twice for no."

Rimmer gave Lister that same lame smile, and slowly closed his eyes. Chuckling, Lister removed his arms from Rimmer’s sleeves, and wrapped them around the hologram’s waist. Rimmer gingerly put his own hands on Lister’s hips.

Lister raised an eyebrow coyly. This gesture was completely lost on Rimmer, whose eyes were still closed. The hologram was breathing a little too quickly, but seemed stuck in a holding pattern, only millimeters from Lister’s face. Rimmer could not take the responsibility for breaking the contact, or for intensifying it. It was just far too much for his fragile ego. He hovered in an agony of indecision, feeling the thrum-thrum of Lister’s heartbeat grow stronger. Lister’s body was solid and real, and felt like the only anchor in sickeningly spinning universe. His grip on Lister’s hips tightened.

Rimmer, Lister noted, had no heartbeat, just a strange low hum. He leaned forward and brushed his lips against Rimmer’s. There were a few things Dave Lister prided himself on. He could whistle the Yankee Doodle Dandy whilst balancing two pints of cider on his head, which was always a hit with the girls, or at least the sort of girls he'd been interested in. He played an absolutely brilliant game of pool that no one could touch. And he'd always considered himself a kind, caring, considerate lover. Of course, even the kindest, most considerate lover in the universe would be a little rusty, not to mention impatient as fuck, after years of deep-space celibacy. He was walking a dangerous line…

Rimmer's lips twitched, and again, he licked them nervously. Impulsively, Lister caught Rimmer’s tongue with his own lips in mid-lick, just for a second. Rimmer drew breath in a gasp.

"You can open yer eyes now," said Lister, softly. Rimmer opened his eyes, and was a little startled to have his whole visual field taken up with Lister's own brown eyes.

"Hi!" Lister said, teasingly.

"Hi..." Rimmer cringed as his voice came out in a teenage squeak.

With his eyes still wide open and fixed on Rimmer's, Lister leaned in for another kiss. His lips brushed carefully against Rimmer’s lips again.

Rimmer leaned forward, practically letting gravity dictate the kiss. Gravity. Inevitable. Safe.

Lister’s restraint, though admirable, was betrayed by his nether regions. Given their proximity, Rimmer could not help but feel the insistent - well - closeness of certain organs. His own excitement was sullied by surprise and confusion. Lister, feeling Rimmer’s confusion, tried not to laugh. He deepened the kiss very, very slowly - much too slowly for his own preference. Oh God, this would just not end well.

Rimmer’s head was swimming. He was not used to kissing, let alone kissing another man. But - it had been far too long since he had been anywhere near this stimulated. The soft-light kissing he did on the Holoship was nothing like this. Nirvanah tasted lovely, yes - in a very light, staticky, and computer-simulated way. This kiss was much more visceral. Lister tasted like stale ship air and curry and cigarette butts...  
He tasted _human_.

Rimmer didn’t taste anything like Lister had imagined he would - because he has imagined it, he realized now. It's something indefinable - not human.  
Not human... But irresistible. Agonizingly delicious.

Rimmer explored the chili-chutney-ness of Lister's mouth - the wrongness that is, nonetheless, just right. And exciting. But Lister couldn’t keep this up much longer. It had been too long, far too long. He was a horny man at the best of times, and this was not one of those times. He needed more, much more. Pulling Rimmer in tightly, he moaned desperately into the hologram's mouth. This was faster than Rimmer's mind could keep up with. He gave in to sensation, letting Lister take the lead.

Breaking the kiss for a few agonizing seconds, Lister whispered hoarsely: "I think I might have an idea why I was so winded..."

Rimmer was panting, now. He had to desperately grasp for thought to figure out what on Io Lister might be talking about. "Yes..." His brain was absolutely at shutdown.

And with that, Lister grabbed the front of Rimmer's shirt, thinking, 'what the hell', and pulled downwards, ripping it apart.

Rimmer shivered, not from the cold. He reached up to touch Lister's cheek, and his brain came back for one last encore... "You might want to say your piece, before we give me... er.. other me... more of an eyeful than he needs."

Lister gave Rimmer a pained, desperate look. He was only barely able to form complete sentences, and Rimmer wanted him to make sense out of what has just happened to them? The smegger. "Now??"  
"Well..." Rimmer frowned. Something told him that it was the right time - something about the way Lister looked, about the angle of the diffuse smeggy storm-light. But he did not say so. He could not, for the life of him, tell where the next thing that emerged from his mouth came from, but it fell out nonetheless.

"You weren't naked."

Yes, thanks for putting that idea into my mind, Lister moaned silently. "You're not making this easier," Lister groaned. "OK. Here goes..."

Lister moved away from Rimmer, and stood up straight. He wondered idly where to look, then realized it did not matter. It would be right no matter what he did.

"Erm... Hi. It's me. From the future. I know you're there, because you told me earlier that you'd seen me telling you this. Now listen; this is important. You need to get the hell out of there, man. Get in an escape-pod. Just go. It’s worth... Both our hides. "

Rimmer rolled over onto his stomach and pushed himself up onto one arm. Looking in the same direction as Lister was, he said, "Trust him, Rimsy. And..." he swallowed, "whatever you do, don't tell Lister."

Lister looked at Rimmer, first in disbelief, then in sudden understanding. He leaned back his head and roared with laughter, reaching down to pull Rimmer close yet again. He couldn’t hold back any longer. He didn’t want to.

"You’re a bastard, you know that," Rimmer said. His voice was muffled from his head being stuck in the junction between Lister's head and shoulder, desperately kissing flesh and pulling at Lister's grotty shirt. Where does he get these? Rimmer wondered. Teenbrats-R-Us?  
"What..." Rimmer continued, gasping out between kisses, "are we..." gasp, "going to tell..." gasp, "Kryten?"

"Figure out... Later..." Lister managed, every inch of his body on fire, pushing at the ridiculous padded blue material that he'd always rather thought looked like the quilts his granny used to make out of out old clubbing gear.

After all, they had 24 hours.


End file.
